Costakis Collection
Author: Yelena Kalinsky
Keywords: apartment exhibition, avant-garde, collecting, non-conformist art
-
- Costakis surrounded by works from his collection, 1971. Photo: Igor Palmin (courtesy of Igor Palmin).
-
- Otari Kandaurov painting the portrait of Costakis, with daughter Katya, Moscow, 1970. Photo: Igor Palmin (courtesy Igor Palmin).
-
- Costakis with the American sculptor George Segal, Moscow, 1977. Photo: Igor Palmin (courtesy of Igor Palmin).
-
- Art historian Margarita Tupitsyn, Costakis, and artist Lydia Masterkov at the birthday party of artist Genrikh Khudyakov, 1971. Photo: Igor Palmin (courtesy of Igor Palmin).
-
- Artists at the farewell party for Costakis, 19 March 1977. Photo: Igor Palmin (courtesy of Igor Palmin).
Date: 1950s-1977
Artists in the collection: Vasily Kandinsky, Ivan Kliun, Dmitri Krasnopevtsev, Kazimir Malevich, Lyubov Popova, Ivan Puni, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, Anatoly Zverev, among many others
Location: Costakis apartment, Prospekt Vernadskogo, Moscow
George Costakis (Georgii Dionisovich Kostaki, 1912-1990) began collecting Russian avant-garde art in 1946, when he discovered three paintings by Olga Rozanova in a Moscow studio, and was bitten by the collecting bug. He soon added 15th-17th century Russian icons and the work of young “nonconformist” artists, like Anatoly Zverev and Dmitri Krasnopevtsev, to his roster. Employed at the Canadian embassy as an administrative clerk, Costakis hunted for lost works by such artists as Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Lyubov Popova, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Ivan Puni, and Ivan Kliun anywhere he could find them, among remaining relatives and tucked away in private rooms and studios around the Soviet Union. At a time when modernist art was hidden from view in the storerooms of Soviet museums, Costakis’s private collection, which he displayed on the walls of his home, became Moscow’s unofficial museum of modern art and a meeting place for international art collectors and art lovers visiting the capital. Regular guests to Costakis’s apartment included nonconformist artists Anatoly Zverev (1931-1986), Oskar Rabin (b. 1928), Dmitri Krasnopevtsev (1924-1995), Dmitri Plavinsky (1937-2012), Vladimir Veisberg (1924-1985), and many others. Costakis’s friendship with the younger artists gave them access to the avant-garde legacy, to which many of their own works aspired and responded. Costakis left the Soviet Union for Greece in 1977, leaving a large portion of his collection as a gift to the Russian people to reside at the State Tretyakov Gallery.
Document: George COSTAKIS – excerpt from memoirs (1993)
